About Orly Genger

Best known for creating large-scale installations from coils of rope, Orly Genger also makes small metal sculptures and collaborates with the designer Jaclyn Mayer to produce knotted rope jewelry. Recalling works by major modernist artists and the craft-based works of 1970s feminist artists like Harmony Hammond and Faith Wilding, Genger’s often-monumental rope installations are frequently painted in bold hues. Big Boss (2010), an 11.5-foot-high stack consisting of 100 miles of rope that spilled into an adjoining room, was painted bright red. Red, Yellow, and Blue (2013), installed in Madison Square Park, is made of 1.4 million feet of hand-crocheted lobster-fishing rope, with which she created three towering structures painted in the primary colors. To create it, she and a team of assistants spent almost every day in her studio over a period of two years, cleaning lobster claws and fish bones out of the rope and crocheting it into strips. Speaking about the development of her artistic practice, Genger has said, “I was really drawn to working with my hands. It was more about using my body as the tool and having a direct relationship with the material.”